Page 130 - Level Up Montage

Author Notes:

It's usually important for the players to at least be aware of what the other PCs can do. As a team, the combined abilities of the party can accomplish great things. Apart, you just have some assorted people taking turns doing their own thing.

I've only come to appreciate this because my previous DM actually put us through a body-swap session to force us to become familiar with each other. And I had to grudgingly admit - we worked a little more as a team after that game.

For the love of Luna's left hoof? :D
I swear I actually said that last night when my daughter tried to con me out of brushing her teeth before bed. Four years old and she's already putting ranks into Bluff.

As for knowing what other PCs do, the majority of my group seldom opens up to each other about their abilities. I hate it because it fosters the OPPOSITE of teamwork. 9_9
Its like... certain players feel that having secret abilities give them some edge against other players or something. I tried sitting down with the troubled ones and explain what "Teamwork" stands for.

It doesn't stand for "Leaving the party behind because you can't wait the 54 seconds to form a plan of action when you very well know Count Strahd is only two rooms away waiting for you to make a bone-headed move like wandering Castle Ravenloft alone."

A bodyswap session does sound interesting and I may give it a shot part way through my playtest session of 5e. The only issue I would have with those is it can just as much foster teamwork as it does frustration as people try to learn the mechanics of a class that they may have passed over. Though I guess that is the point, isn't it?

My groups tend to be very open about their abilities, but usually only for "Look what I can do that you can't" contests. The things they hold in reserve are the things they want to do at least one time before the DM says that you can't do it anymore.

The DM has not let me do my move-fly->thunder summons, bringing enemies up 8 squares, next to me->master of moments extra minor action to get an extra move to fly back down again. Its 3 enemies who get hit by a sorcerer power and THEN take fall damage, no way to save if it hits.

Well, my most recent campaign *started* as an open-ability campaign... then it turned out that the two evil characters started playing their alignments and the neutral jumped on the bandwagon. I guess it's an evil campaign now? Because then the secrecy would be justified.

An emergency party... in an RPG context, this would sound like a team of back-up characters. Of course, as inexperienced as I am to tabletop RPGs, for all I know random parties while trekking may be a regular occurrence or something. ;)

Years back, on the first session of a Super Hero campaign I began, I asked for everyone to turn in their characters to me. I then laid them aside and handed out everyone a completely different character sheet at random from a group I created.
The PCs were thus asked to RP as these completely different characters for the first 1/3rd of the session-- a team of Super Heroes that had to break into a top secret laboratory and stop a sinister genetic experiment. They succeeded, but not without some interesting wounds.

After that exercise, the PCs got their characters back and we began as they expected. Those temporary heroes were never spoken of again and the players generally forgot them.

About 3 months later, the PCs were on a mission to investigate an outbreak of unusual mutant sightings when they were surprised by meeting that super team again-- old and retired. :D
The wounds suffered were now interesting scars on them and they would foldly recall their old "glory days", even mentioning old tricks they had, which were tricks the PCs used when they played as them.

The mutant outbreak was that same old genetic lab back up and running under new management. It was a nice tie-in to the campaign.

Ahh,yes, leveling up, the part that takes the longest for our parties ('least in my experience). I swear we have some of the most indecisive players; we not only have trouble deciding on feat and new abilities, but there's always someone who decides they want the DM to houserule something ridiculous, or heaven forbid, someone wants to multiclass. The rule always has been that you have to always mention, in-character and well ahead of time, what your multiclass is and the character motivation as to why you are doing it... never ends well. :/

I usually multi class for one character simply for the extra power and the additional skill, though I try to make sense in character how I learned how to do it. A ranger I'm using had an ex girlfried rogue so he multiclassed rogue and is skilled in thievery. My mage is a stage performer so he multiclassed bard and learned bluff. However ultimately for me, it's just another feet.

I usually play mages, so almost everyone is always waiting for me to pick my spells avery time we level up.
And then there's my brother, who's so indecisive that it has become a running gag to say that if he were Mario standing before a captured princess Peach, someone would have to TELL him to untie her.
"Save the princess, Mario!" is now our way of telling him to hurry up his decisions.

The particular reason I mentioned the multiclass predicament was that recently we had a problem with one of our players in our Star Wars campaign trying to convince the GM to let him multiclass noble. The problem wasn't the multiclassing so much as the only reason we wanted to do it was to get the wealth talent, which gives him 5000 credits per character level when he gains a new level. Took us nearly an hour to explain to him there's no plausible way to justify what was essentially "BAMF I'm royalty now! I has monies!" especially with the background he laid out.

I can think of a number of ways to justify something like that, including the classic "whatya mean I just inherited a duchy?" There is also reward, marriage, winning it in a poker game, etc. You see a greedy player, I see plot hooks and complications to have fun with.

Mind you, if a player wanted to do that in a campaign I was running it would require a 'background bribe'[1]. You want to inherit a title out of nowhere? Fine, write up a setting description for your duchy and make sure there are plenty of hooks for me to play with.

[1] As a GM, I am always open to such bribes. Players willing to do the work of worldbuilding should be rewarded.

I'm all for world-building; all the players should contribute something at some point. Problem was, I know this guy too well, and he just wanted money to rain from the the Aether when he leveled up. The argument ended with the DM stating, "Look you can multiclass however you please, as long as you have the content to back it up," and he didn't say anything after that. I'm hoping he'll surprise me and come up with something good, as I'm all for eating my own words in name of great game sessions; so far though, he's having trouble with his standard background, so I'm not holding my breath.

One of the habits that has made some happy players around me have been making up ability tokens using note cards or other writeable objects. So if I use (for example) an ability that gives someone an extra skill roll during the next five turns, I can hand them a token for it, with instructions on what it is and how/when to use it.

I also use note cards to organize my spells and certain other abilities, which means if someone wants to sub one of my characters, I can just hand them a stack of spell cards to select from, instead of having them hog a player's manual all game session.

Cool. I recommend note cards for your spell cards, because they come in large packs for cheap, and are large enough to hold the details of almost any spell or ability on one side (if you abbreviate a little). And for tokens, I used a fine-point Sharpie on the backs of white Magic card-protectors (since they're sold for relatively cheap -- cheaper than the other colors or protector even, are different enough to easily grab from my box when I need a new token and not a note card, and I don't need more than a dozen or so most of the time).

For some reason, we've always had problems with group cohesion in games I play or run. I don't know if it's just a combination of personality conflicts and vastly different levels of experience in playing, but I know exactly what you mean by a group of people all doing their own thing.

As a long time DM for 16 years, I can say for a fact I've yet to memorize much on any given system I've run, let alone seen players that could even remember their basic inventory. :D

I try to keep it simple-- "You don't have to memorize your character's abilities, but PLEASE for the love of Luna's left hoof could you write down the page numbers your abilities can be found?"
It'll go a long way to speeding up research:

DM: "And finally, you find a +1 Ring of Incognito."
PC1: "What does that do?"
DM: "Magic book, page 120."
PC2: **Looks it up in only 7 seconds**
PC1: "Oh, that was quick."
PC2: "That's what she said?"
DM: **Face palm**

I'm pretty much at the other end of the spectrum. I'm able to memorize large chunks of multiple game systems and I'm generally voted as the rules guru in whatever group I'm in. Even years after not using anything from Cthulhu d20 and d20 Modern I still remember a decent chunk of the rules considering I don't even have books or PDFs to reference (used to have the SRD for d20 Modern but that computer is long dead and the SRD is no longer hosted on the site; whereas the book for Cthulhu d20 that I had I was forced by my father to pawn off along with a good chunk of my D&D 3E books).

I tend to have no problem recounting large amounts of information that I have invested in, both timewise, and emotionally. I probably wouldn't have very much trouble being able to memorize the full timeline of my character's 20+ page backstory, probably my carefully selected equipment, and possibly my stats. For some reason, I believe that statting my character would be the quickest and least time consuming part of this process, due to me considering it the least important part of the character. Not good with remembering numbers, but a good story sticks with me.

Have the PCs glimpse into the past of an NPC by actually playing out his actions, then later reap the consequences of it (e.g. clearing out a spider cave as a random hero in the past and making it easier for the PCs, or failing and having them breed into something even nastier for the PCs to deal with).

Same can be applied for the future, for the PCs themselves. Have the wizard control the fighter in a situation far in the future, in an effort to get vital information you need for your quest (Like lore on how you defeated the big bad, or where he was located, etc...)

*laughs* It wasn't me who did that Newbiespud, is was Astregoth the demon lord. I'm just an innocent DM.

That was a very cool adventure, it was great to watch you all figuring out all the cool things each-other could do. The fact that you hated it at first even made it into a growth experience that brought you all together.

I loved it when everyone leveled up in D&D party and got their new abilities and skills. And Gear. My GM actually had to look up a weapon I had, I was running a Warrior, can't remember the specific type, with a scythe.

We had a guy who had a habit of not letting us know what he had done when leveled up, till they started audited characters and nailed him for cheating, three time!!